Yesterday it was reported that Robert Mueller had begun asking Trump-Russia witnesses about the money trail between Donald Trump and Russia prior to the 2016 election. As Palmer Report pointed out, this was a significant development because Mueller doesn’t begin asking witnesses these kinds of questions until he’s already uncovered the evidence himself. Now we have yet another major development along those lines.

It’s now being reported that Mueller is asking witnesses what Donald Trump knew about the Democratic National Committee emails that were hacked, stolen and released during the 2016 election, according to an on-air MSNBC news report. Why is this so important? Because again, Mueller doesn’t begin asking witnesses about these kinds of things unless he has the evidence in hand. If Mueller weren’t sitting on evidence that Trump had knowledge or involvement in the DNC email hacking, he wouldn’t be asking questions about it. So where does this get us?

Trump is still regularly insisting that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia during the election. We already know this is a false claim, as a number of key Trump campaign officials and advisers, along with multiple members of Trump’s family, all conspired with the Russians in various ways during the election. But this new development takes things much further, because it ties Trump himself directly to the Trump-Russia efforts to influence the outcome of the election.

The DNC emails were strategically released, often out of context and sometimes doctored, with the intent of misleading voters into believing negative things about the Democratic Party in general and about Hillary Clinton in particular. If Robert Mueller can prove that Donald Trump was on board with this strategy, and it’s now essentially being reported that he does, it’ll go far beyond merely demonstrating the non-legal term collusion. It’ll demonstrate that Trump committed a specific crime: conspiracy against the United States.

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